Interdisciplinary Artist + Facilitator
2020.
Mixed Heritage: Bridging Dissonance in Our Bodies through Ancestry Work
From a series of conversations about mixed identity in 2020, Or Levinson and I invited members of Don't You Feel It Too's SEED Cohort to listen to us reflect on our discoveries, honor the land, and move together to connect with our ancestry.
Learn more about our project here.
Photograph taken by Xiaolu Wang at Boom Island Park, Minneapolis, MN.
2016 - Ongoing.
Trauma Memory Identity Project
The Trauma Memory Identity Project is an ongoing series of mixed media paintings to process how trauma has shaped my identity as a woman and survivor of sexual trauma.
In the summer of 2016, I archived all of the photographs and objects from throughout my life, inspired by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma and Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction. Walking back through time, many moves, and relocation after being assaulted, I chose images to print at a larger scales onto canvas. Through a developing color, symbolic and texture language, I process layers of trauma around my identity: gender roles, sexuality, and fetishization.
(Pictured) Detail of Untitled. Using paint, graphite, colored pencil, fabric, glue, and a base photograph of my sisters and I in Japan when I was younger, I think on my relationship with family, womanhood and self as it connects to my experience with sexual trauma.
2016.
Survivor Art Meet-ups through Break the Silence
The Survivor Art Meet-ups were a series of art-based workshops I facilitated for survivors of sexual trauma through Break the Silence, a Twin-Cities-based organization that "support[s] survivors of sexual violence by striving to end rape culture and hold perpetrators accountable".
(Pictured) Survivor Art Meet-up #2, documentation from a workshop at Pillsbury House & Theatre. Please note that I do not take photographs of participant work or participants because I believe it is unethical. This is a detail of my example for participants.
2015 - 2017.
Untitled series, Participatory Works
The Untitled series are participatory works centered on bringing awareness to the general public about sexual violence and rape culture in the United States. These mixed media pieces asked audiences to interact directly with them, which ranged from hammering directly into paintings to working together to untangle a "sexuality timeline" to writing supportive statements to survivors.
(Pictured) Untitled (Breaking the Cycle) was an interactive piece that asked people to tie or untie pieces of fabric, rope, and other materials to reveal the truth of a survivor's experience. Alongside instructions to participate was a QR code that linked to statistics on sexual violence.
2015 - 2017.
Shaped Paintings
Shaped Paintings are a series of mixed media paintings that come together to form a larger story about my experience as a survivor. These process- vs product-based pieces allowed me to process trauma while being present and begin the journey of interrupting cycles of dissociation.
Created on large pieces of wood panels, I use my entire body to work paint, charcoal, colored pencil, and graphite into the surface while it's on the ground. After a piece feels complete, I then cut them out using a band saw.
(Pictured) Untitled.